Results for "mars curiosity"

NASA's Curiosity rover has been on the surface of Mars for a month now, and it recently collected a sample of the air around it for the first time since landing on the surface of the Red Planet. Among its various other duties, one of Curiosity's goals is to study the air composition on Mars, and it does so by collecting air samples with its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (Sam). Of course, NASA scientists already know what to expect when the sample results come back - carbon dioxide, and lots of it.

If you were wondering why the photos coming back to us from NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars were so small, you certainly aren't alone. As Curiosity's camera project's manager Mike Ravine explains to the Digital Photography Review, it's not a matter of being able to put a more high quality camera aboard, it's the data transfer. While your smartphone is capable of transferring gigabytes of memory a day if you really want it to, the Mars mission is limited to 250 megabits per day - that's 31.25 megabytes (MB) and NASA certainly wasn't about to dedicate that whole amount to photographs only.

It's time to get cute with science as NASA is working with Mattel toys to create none other than the Mars Curiosity Rover for their newest Hot Wheels lineup. This little beast of a vehicle is a 1:64 scale replica of the actual NASA Mars Curiosity Rover that'll be touching down this Saturday Night on the red planet. This machine will be a mix of plastic and hardcore metal and will be landing approximately one month after the real deal makes its mark in just a few days.

This week the folks at NASA have let loose a video showing the challenges they face in getting to Mars, specifically with the Mars rover Curiosity and how it will be landing on August 5th of this year. The video shows the engineers to designed not only the entry and descent of the new Curiosity mission but the landing system as well, with candid talk on how they have zero - that's zero - margin for error in this mission. 3D models and projections of the future are also included for full visualization of the situation.

NASA's Curiosity rover has sparked an unexpected argument over methane on Mars, as operators attempt to figure out whether the gas is local or imported. The existence of methane on the red planet could be a strong indicator either of biological life or even just lingering geological activity, hence scientists' collective interest in whether it's present or not. However, while Curiosity seems to have spotted the gas, there are some who think it itself is responsible for it.

Despite the recent resurfaced scandal surrounding Mars One, it's business as usual for those working on the real and present-day Mars. That doesn't mean, however, that NASA's scientists don't have anything just as spectacular but even more scientifically sound. From the results gathered by Curiosity Rover's "Sample Analysis at Mars" equipment, or SAM, researchers discovered the presence of nitrogen, quite a lot of them. While this alone might be boring, it's the nature of those nitrogen molecules that are more interesting. These particular molecules are a type of nitrogen that could have very well been useful to organic life.

NASA's Curiosity rover has been busy with its drill again, and analysis of the second sample of Martian rock is already turning up some unexpected conditions back when the red planet supported liquid water. Curiosity put its low-percussion-level drill into play for the first time last week, carving a chunk out of a site known as "Mojave 2" at the base of Mount Sharp, and feeding it in powder form into its Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. Turns out, even though the analysis isn't finished yet, there are already signs of a surprising amount of jarosite, to a degree that suggests Mars was - at least in parts - a whole lot more acidic than predicted by earlier testing.

While the rover itself has technically been in service for far longer than a year, its Mars visit has now lasted one full Martian cycle. That’s a whole cycle around the sun for Mars, also known as a Martian year. To celebrate, the NASA Mars Curiosity rover stretched one of its arms out to take a lovely selfie.

NASA's Mars exploring Curiosity rover has begun drilling on the Martian surface, with a test run identifying a good spot to take new rock samples. Curiosity had been hunting down a promising location over the weekend, using a variety of tools to dust down and otherwise prepare the location NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab has dubbed "Windjana" after a Western Australian gorge.

NASA has been drilling into the surface of Mars using tools on the Curiously Rover for a long time now. The goal is to determine the composition of rocks on the planet and to help determine if any water exists or existed on the planet while ultimately looking for signs of life on the red planet. So far, Curiosity has drilled into two other rocks and both of them have been mudstone.